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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24226306">First Encounters</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancestrallizard/pseuds/ancestrallizard'>ancestrallizard</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SMT Daemon AU [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei Series</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 18:14:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,538</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24226306</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancestrallizard/pseuds/ancestrallizard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Suspended from school, Kazuya wanders around town and makes two surprise acquaintances.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SMT Daemon AU [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748653</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>First Encounters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>And I'm back with more of this, thing</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Suspension was a paradox. </p>
<p>Not being in school was a relief, but almost as soon as the punishment was handed out Kazuya wanted to return. High school was its own circle of hell, but it was routine – without it, he was adrift. The sentiment ran parallel through Khayyam – his daemon was restless all night, crawling around the room and scratching at the walls while Kazuya stared up at the refracted street lights glaring across the ceiling.</p>
<p>Once sleep proved elusive, he finished leftover homework, watched the sun come up, and waited for his mother to leave for work. He heard her footsteps pause outside his door and linger, but she didn’t knock; only slipping a small shopping list under his door before leaving.</p>
<p>He thought about opening the door, but stayed rooted to his desk chair. He didn’t want to see the look on her face she’d been wearing so often. </p>
<p>When the front door closed and locked, a thick, heavy silence fell on the house. </p>
<p>Khayyam nipped his hand. “Let’s go out. I’m gonna go nuts if we’re here all day.”</p>
<p>He went to Inogashira Park with Pascal in tow. His dog at least seemed to be enjoying the suspension. He was clearly excited to be outside in the morning, tail wagging a mile a minute. Seeing something else so plainly happy was refreshing, and not for the first time he was profoundly grateful for the nonjudgmental nature of animals.</p>
<p>It was cloudy and cold. They walked towards the center of the park, the usual path now littered with dead leaves that Pascal strained to sniff. The few leaves still clinging to the tree branches rustled loudly in the wind as a ghostly echo of summer cicadas, disturbingly loud in the silence. </p>
<p>The asphalt path soon gave way to a cultivated one, and then a pitted and muddy one, its edges overgrown by weeds. Kazuya shivered. He should have brought his jacket, but just couldn’t be bothered to go back and get one. Around his shoulders, Khayyam shifted into an ermine and curled around the exposed skin of his neck, warm fur protecting his skin like a coat.</p>
<p>Kazuya walked on auto-pilot, trying not to think about school, or his mother, or Khayyam, because when he did, breathing got harder, like a weight was crushing him sideways. </p>
<p>He was so successful in not thinking that he only realized something was amiss when Pascal stopped walking.</p>
<p>Kazuya snapped out of his fog. They were in the center of the park, in front of an old shed surrounded by a sparse group of trees. Pascal was fine, just sniffing at the dying grass, but someone was sitting against the shed, head tucked down and arms wrapped around their knees. They gave no indication they heard him.</p>
<p>“Are they hurt?” Khayyam whispered.</p>
<p>Without another word or warning, his daemon climbed down his arm and began to stalk across the grass towards the stranger.</p>
<p>It wasn’t far, not nearly enough to strain their bond, but panic spiked through Kazuya all the same. He followed, Pascal close on his heels.</p>
<p>When he stepped on a branch, the stranger’s head snapped up. He was another teenager, maybe Kazuya’s age, with short black hair and glasses. An ugly bruise was purpling on his right cheek. His eyes looked shiny and wet. </p>
<p>Kazuya froze, but Khayyam kept moving forward, body low to the ground. “Are you all right?” He asked.</p>
<p>“Fuck off.” The boy growled. </p>
<p>Kazuya and his daemon both flinched. Khayyam transformed into a small red bird and retreated to perch on Kazuya’s shoulder.</p>
<p>The other boy stared at them, wide-eyed. “You – wait, did it just change? How old are you?”</p>
<p>Kazuya’s grip tightened around Pascal’s leash. The kid looked hurt –  maybe he couldn’t move too fast.</p>
<p>The stranger stood up and brushed dirt off of his grey coat. “Seriously, was that a trick?”</p>
<p>He took a step forward, and Kazuya took one back. Khayyam must have changed again, because the claws digging into his shoulder were longer and sharper than a sparrow’s. Pascal whined, probably sensing some of the tension.  He pet the top of the dog’s head, and felt a bit more sure of himself.</p>
<p>“It’s not a trick,” Khayyam finally answered for him.</p>
<p>The stranger was frowning again, but he looked more puzzled at a daemon addressing him than disgusted. Something stirred in the leaves next to him, and a daemon rose up to peer at them both. Kazuya didn’t know what it was, but it looked similar to a weasel or ermine, with a long body, small face, and short red fur.</p>
<p>“Can it change on command?” The other boy asked.</p>
<p>Kazuya and Khayyam glanced at each other. His daemon changed whenever he felt like it, but Kazuya didn’t know how much he could do. He’d only ever asked him to change less. </p>
<p>Unprompted, Khayyam flew up over his head and dove back down. His form blurred twice in rapid succession, from bird to snake to something small and mammalian before landing on his shoulder, nearly sliding off if not for Kazuya catching him.</p>
<p>“Holy shit.” The stranger muttered under his breath. Then, louder, he asked, “How did you get it to do that?”</p>
<p>“He didn’t ‘get’ me to do anything.” Khayyam snapped. </p>
<p>“Oh.” The stranger frowned. “Sucks. Thought you could show me. Looks useful as hell.”</p>
<p>Kazuya bit back a hysterical laugh.</p>
<p>“’Useful’”? Khayyam echoed from his shoulder, clearly skeptical. </p>
<p>The stranger moved closer. His daemon climbed up the back of his coat to settle on his shoulder. Pascal sat up straighter at his approach, but when no attention was forthcoming he sighed and lay down, plainly bored.</p>
<p>“Are you kidding?” The other boy asked. “It’s a lifesaver. You could make yourself untouchable, or do some serious damage. It’s way more useful than this one, anyway.” </p>
<p>His daemon didn’t react to the veiled insult, only peering at them both with dark, inquisitive eyes, mirroring its human’s envy.</p>
<p>“It’s not that easy.” Kazuya said. It was the first thing he’d said all day, and his voice came out scratchy and lopsided.</p>
<p>The stranger glanced at the fading bruise on Kazuya’s temple before looking away. “Guess not.”</p>
<p>This close, Kazuya saw the stranger’s torn collar and the cut on his lip. If he felt any pain from his wounds, he wasn’t showing it. </p>
<p>“Who are you?” The stranger asked.</p>
<p>“His name is Kazuya,” his daemon answered, “And I’m Khayyam.”</p>
<p>The other boy’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t otherwise respond to the dual strangeness of a daemon introducing its human, or the daemon’s unusual name. “I’m Takeshi. My daemon is Izumi. Maybe I’ll see you around.”</p>
<p>He left. Kazuya watched him leave, and waited until he was totally gone to turn around and head home.</p>
<p>On his left side, Pascal sniffed at every patch of grass and clump of dirt as if he hadn’t just passed them ten minutes ago, Khayyam walked on his right side, lost in thought. Kazuya felt more than saw the daemon change shape as he waded through the fallen leaves, a habit of his when he was thinking. </p>
<p>“Useful.” His daemon kept muttering. “That’s a new one. Useful, useful.”</p>
<p>Kazuya glanced over in time to see Khayyam leap into a pile of leaves and emerge in a shape mirroring Takeshi’s daemon, a mustelid with a sharp face and a long tail, though golden furred instead of red. </p>
<p>“Is useful good?” Kazuya asked.</p>
<p>“I don’t know.” Khayyam answered, scratching behind his ear. “It’s nicer than ‘freak’, at least. What do you think?”</p>
<p>Kazuya thought. Talking to someone new who didn’t lecture him, insult him, or immediately leave wasn’t bad. But the way the stranger and his daemon looked at Khayyam with such intensity made him feel like he was going to be cut up and put under a microscope.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure,” he said. “We probably won’t see them again, so it doesn’t matter that much anyway.”</p>
<p>Khayyam growled, but didn’t say anything more, and Kazuya drifted back into his own thoughts. </p>
<p>Once home, Kazuya set out water for Pascal, but before he could retreat upstairs until it was time to make dinner, Khayyam spoke up form the countertop. “Groceries! We forgot the groceries!”</p>
<p>Damn it.</p>
<p>He gathered his wallet and keys again before grabbing his green jacket from the kitchen chair and rushing out the door. It was early enough that the shops probably weren’t too crowded yet, but he didn’t want to chance it. </p>
<p>“Shouldn’t we bring Pascal?” His daemon asked as he locked the front door.</p>
<p>Kazuya hesitated a moment, hand on the doorknob. “We’re fine. I can do this by myself.”</p>
<p>Even with the jacket, the walk to the mall felt colder than the one to the park. Khayyam paced as a red fox beside him, ears twitching every which way. It wasn’t too crowded, but he kept his gaze averted as much as possible all the same, feeling small and vulnerable. The few people he did see, to check if anyone was staring, were mostly unfamiliar and unremarkable A few were wearing circular pins on their collars that he hadn’t seen before.</p>
<p>No one spared him a glance, and when he ducked into an alley so Khayyam could safely change into an inconspicuous garden snake and curl around his neck, hidden by his collar, his shoulders began to relax. He entered the mall almost relaxed; it wasn’t crowded, and he was familiar enough that nothing worse than the same wary glances and whispers followed him to the coffee shop.</p>
<p>He picked up the grounds, bought the other groceries from the market next door, and by the time he started going home he almost felt okay. Khayyam squirmed around his neck, tired from staying in one form for so long, but they didn’t have far to go. They should be okay.</p>
<p>Just after he crossed an intersection, Khayyam coiled tighter. “Someone’s following us. They’re wearing a red jacket.”</p>
<p>Kazuya’s mind immediately flashed to Ozawa. He glanced from the corner of his eye. Someone tall in a red jacket was in fact following them, but not closely enough to be that strange. “Maybe he’s just going somewhere close to home,” he said, even as his heart rate began to quicken. </p>
<p>Khayyam tensed even further, nearly choking him. Anxiety thrummed between them like static. “No, no, no, he’s watching us.”</p>
<p>“You don’t know that.”</p>
<p>“I still don’t like it!”</p>
<p>Before Kazuya could respond, his foot caught on a crack in the sidewalk. He fell hard, groceries spilling everywhere. His palms stung, and one began to sluggishly bleed, red liquid oozing out around bits of gravel stuck to his skin. </p>
<p>He heard run up. As he pushed himself to his knees, the stranger in red crouched beside him. “Are you all right?”</p>
<p>The boy reached out, but before he could touch him a blur of black and grey dashed between them. Khayyam stood in front of Kazuya as a furious grey housecat, back arched and fur bristling. He swiped at the stranger hissed at him. “Back off!”</p>
<p>The stranger pulled his hand back, eyes almost comically large.</p>
<p>Kazuya tried to nudge his daemon aside. “Sorry! Sorry, please ignore him.”</p>
<p>“It’s fine,” the stranger said, still glancing from him to Khayyam like he thought he would try to bite him. “I apologize if I startled you.” He said. “Let me help you get your things, at least.”</p>
<p>They gathered the spilled groceries. A few boxes were dented, but nothing had broken. Kazuya kept glancing at the stranger helping him. He looked as if he were around Kazuya’s age, though taller than him, with brown hair and eyes, and Kazuya could see that he wore a blue necklace under his jacket</p>
<p>“I hope you aren’t too injured?” he asked, handing over the last can.</p>
<p>Kazuya took it, ignoring Khayyam still bristling at his side. “I’m good. Thanks.”</p>
<p>He left, and the stranger started walking in the same direction as him again. “Um. Are you following me?” Kazuya asked.</p>
<p>It sounded stupid out loud – why would he tell the truth if he was? But the stranger shook his head, looking flustered. “No, not at all! We’re probably heading in the same direction. Is one of your neighbors a girl named Yuka?”</p>
<p>What, was he a stalker now too? “Yes?”</p>
<p>“I’m going to go see her. She’s my girlfriend, now, actually,” he said, glancing away and blushing. As he did, the blue necklace under his jacket moved. Kazuya saw that it was something with blue scales, and realized it was probably his daemon. The motion also flashed a pin on his lapel – the same pin he kept seeing around the neighborhood.</p>
<p>“I recognized you,” the stranger went on. “Not by name, but she told me she had a neighbor with a daemon that…” He coughed. “Anyway. We’re meeting at Inogashira Park, and I wasn’t sure about where it was.”</p>
<p>Kazuya wondered if Takeshi was still wandering the park or if he’d gone home. What a strange day – speaking to two strangers with his own voice more than he’d talked to anyone else in weeks. </p>
<p>As they walked, stranger’s gaze fell back to Khayyam as he jumped up to Kazuya’s shoulder and settled as a brown sparrowhawk. “Do you know why your daemon still changes form?”</p>
<p>“No.” He said. He felt cold again.</p>
<p>Khayyam’s small talons dug into his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” The daemon added.</p>
<p>“But it shouldn’t be happening.” The stranger said bluntly, his voice suddenly impassioned. He stopped, and before Kazuya could think any better he stopped as well, a too-familiar panic beginning to churn in his gut. They were in an open space, he could leave, but how fast was he?</p>
<p>The stranger was looking at Kazuya, and Kazuya really wished he wasn’t. “Daemons like this, tarragon, can be studied now. They don’t always have to stay as they are. Whether you think it matters or not, don’t you still want to know? Shouldn’t you know?”</p>
<p>Kazuya blinked, carefully unresponsive (though the same could not be said for Khayyam, whose feathers were rising in agitation). ‘Tarragon’ bounced around his mind, growing louder and louder each time it repeated like an echo in reverse. </p>
<p>As the silence stretched on, the stranger’s face fell, as if realizing what he’d just said.</p>
<p>Khayyam took off and perched in a dead tree above them, staring down the street. “Mom’s coming up the sidewalk, we have to go.”</p>
<p>Kazuya ducked past the stranger. ‘The park is close by, you won’t miss it.”</p>
<p>“But –“</p>
<p>He sped away, Khayyam soaring above him.</p>
<p>When Kazuya entered his house, it was empty, aside from Pascal rushing up to meet him.</p>
<p>“Khayyam, where’s mom?” he asked, alternating between putting food away and petting his dog.</p>
<p>His daemon stretched out on the counter as a yellow-striped lizard. “Not here yet.” He said. “But we had to leave, so I lied.” He hissed, little claws scratching the countertop. “What an idiot! ‘Tarragon!’ Who would even say that?”</p>
<p>Kazuya shrugged. “Maybe he’s just old fashioned.”</p>
<p>Khayyam just kept grumbling even as Kazuya picked him up and retreated to his room. Surprisingly, he was smiling, a bit. The questions and comments about his daemon were nothing new, but he was glad he and his daemon were talking about it instead of letting it sit between them in frosty silence.</p>
<p>He hugged him. “Thanks for not biting his face off.”</p>
<p>His daemon laughed.</p>
<p>=</p>
<p>The sun sank quickly. </p>
<p>Takeshi drifted through the streets towards a favorite convenience store on the other side of town as streetlights flickered to life above him. When he got there, he might go in, might snatch what he could when the cashier’s back was turned and keep wandering into the night. This was how he killed time waiting for his father to drink himself to sleep so he could sneak back in without being seen. </p>
<p>Tonight though, he barely thought about the store, or his father, or anything else except what he’d seen that day.</p>
<p>As they walked along an old bridge road, Izumi dashed around his legs, nose twitching in excitement. “I wonder how many shapes he can be? How many could <em>I</em>be?”</p>
<p>“Why are you even asking?” Takeshi asked. “You’ve already settled.”</p>
<p>All the same, the second he saw the kid’s daemon change shape despite him being well into his teens, the possibility caught his attention too. It was as amazing as it was infuriating – that kid had so much power at his fingertips and it didn’t look like he was doing shit with it.</p>
<p>Izumi climbed up the back of his coat to cling to his shoulder. “Yeah, but his daemon still changed! Maybe he used to be like us.”</p>
<p>Takeshi paused on the bridge and looked out at the lights of the town flickering like the ends of cigarettes. On a good night, he could stand here and pretend he was above everything else. It was a lie; weakness followed him like a miasma and flashed like a neon sign so that even strangers seeing him for the first time always thought the same thing; vulnerable, weak, pathetic. He wanted Izumi to settle into something strong and dangerous enough to make them all think twice about him. When she settled into a useless mongoose, it was just one more betrayal in a life full of them. </p>
<p>But if Izumi could change again…</p>
<p>“Maybe a leopard,” his daemon wondered. “I always wanted to be a leopard. Or a wolf!” Then she started giggling, clinging to his shoulder to stop herself from falling off. “No, a pit viper! Just one bite, and problem solved!” She laughed, loud and breathless. “Think about how they’d fucking <em>squirm</em>!”</p>
<p>He smiled a bit too, and didn’t feel any sting from his hunger or bruises. There was a solution in sight, if he could only learn how to grasp it. </p>
<p>No one, not Ozawa, not his father, would be able to even think about laying a hand on him again without it being bitten off. </p>
<p>=</p>
<p>Yuji slumped over his desk, head buried in his crossed arms without a thought as to how dramatic it might look. His parents were still away at a Magisterium meeting, so there no chance someone could enter his and witness his self-pity. </p>
<p>Well. Almost no one.</p>
<p>Around his neck, Selah stirred. Free from his red jacket, he felt her slither down to the desk and heard the rasp of her long scaled body curling on a textbook.</p>
<p>A forked tongue brushed feather-light against his temple. “It wasn’t so bad.” She said. Her voice was always soft, and now with just the two of them it was barely a whisper.</p>
<p>“It could not have been worse,” Yuji muttered. “I was so stupid. Why did I say that?”</p>
<p>He had wondered about how to meet him without coming off as awkward when the opportunity practically presented itself to him. All he had to do was say hello, or just help him pick up his groceries, or pretty much anything else except what he’d done.</p>
<p>Once Yuji saw the daemon in person, anything he was planning to say went out the window. Seeing it in person was - strange. It didn’t look cursed at all. It wasn’t hurting its human, or anyone else, and it didn’t look like it was in pain like magisterium texts said it would be. It was unusual, but no more than that. </p>
<p>He wanted to ask if he wanted his daemon to be normal. Surely he had to? Who wouldn’t? But the other boy probably wouldn’t ever speak to him again.  </p>
<p>Selah wound against his arm. He heard her tail knock his magisterium pin off a stack of papers. “Maybe he will understand. If you speak to him, truthfully.”</p>
<p>He coughed out a sound that might have been a laugh. “We can’t do that.” </p>
<p>She nudged his cheek. “Yuji.”</p>
<p>Reluctantly, he took his hands down and opened his eyes. He blinked spots away as his room came into focus; his desk, the old lamp, open textbooks and loose sheets of music, and his daemon. </p>
<p>At first glance, Selah looked like an ordinary snake daemon. As thick around as his wrist with dark blue scales, a stripe down her back and patches of black scales near her eyes. She looked normal, until she blinked, or she flickered a three-forked tongue, or one looked closely and saw that the strange stripe running down her head and back was a fine layer of turquoise feathers.</p>
<p>She was a creature with no parallel in reality. Not completely tarragon, but still alien. Still wrong.</p>
<p>Selah moved up his arm and curled around his neck, closing her eyes. “We can try again,” she said. “There’s hope yet. Shouldn’t we try?”</p>
<p>Downstairs, the front door opened; His parents were home. </p>
<p>Yuji pulled his algebra textbook closer and got back to work. Selah was right; they’d seen a supposed impossibility in the flesh. There was hope yet. Who knew what was possible? Maybe Selah could find a way to change again, too, to return to flux and settle into a normal form. </p>
<p>Maybe they’d be able to see the other boy again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>twitter.com/DVLblues</p>
<p>ancestrallizard.tumblr.com</p></blockquote></div></div>
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